Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Ol' Groove is one'a those comics fans nutty enough to remember when and where he got certain comics. I can remember picking up my copy of Marvel Comics Super Special #2 from the local Convenient Food Mart around this very date in 1977. I'd seen the ads and the blurbs in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins, so I was on the prowl for this full-color, magazine sized, feature-length Conan extravaganza. I'd been saving an extra quarter here and there so I'd have the buck fifty when I needed it...and sure 'nuff, one dreary December afternoon on the way home from school (freshman year, blechh) I found it on the bottom shelf of the magazine rack, stuffed behind the regular sized comics. I hope I didn't have any homework that night, 'cause all I can remember is spending the whole evening poring over the masterpiece of comicbook art Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Alfredo Alcala, and Marie Severin had created.

It was Conan-fan heaven, man! The story, based on Conan creator Robert E. Howard's "Black Vulmea's Vengeance", filled with action and adventure, set in an exotic local held me spell-bound. The art, so lush and detailed, was better than just about anything Teen Groove had ever before experienced. Marie Severins colors, painted, rather than the usual flat comicbook colors, blew my mind. See for yourself, Groove-ophile! While the scans don't quite do justice to the actual printed (on Baxter paper) mag, you can still see how different, how much more sophisticated Ms. Severins colors were compared to standard comics of the day. Today, "painterly" comics are the norm, but in 1977? This was far-freakin'-out, man!

Glad you enjoyed it, fellas! I'll be posting more sword and sorcery in the weeks to come. In fact, you can look for a whole series of s&s posts, probably in January.

Thanks for the heads-up, Aldous. I hope I did a better job editing this time. It makes me feel really good that you finally got to read this story--kinda puts you in the same shoes I was in 31 years ago--and that's the whole purpose of this blog!

I was lucky enough to find a copy of this mag at my local comic shop recently. Often in the past when I read the black and white Savage Sword of Conan, I asked myself - what would this great art look like in color? Well, here we have the colorist from EC experimenting with what looks like paints in a high quality format, over a Buscema/Alcala masterpiece. I love it!Also of note are the four Marvel Treasury Editions of Conan, which are also in color but in a supersize format. They include maps that plot out Conan's movements for the first 100 issues of CTB. I kept these maps at my side while re-reading the Chronicles of Conan reprints last month and it was great.

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Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.

All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!